


Staking Life on Hope

by AnotherAnon



Series: Danganronpa [4]
Category: Dangan Ronpa, Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa 3: The End of 希望ヶ峰学園 | The End of Kibougamine Gakuen | End of Hope's Peak High School
Genre: F/M, Kamunami Week 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 12:20:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9820322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnotherAnon/pseuds/AnotherAnon
Summary: Izuru Kamukura was bored to death with life.  Despair was the only unknown, the only thing he could not predict...or was it?  If there was something besides despair that he couldn't predict, what would he give for that unknown?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Another piece for Tumblr's 2017 Kamunami Week. Basically, what if DR3's Despair arc ep. 10 went a little differently?
> 
> I've rated this "mature" instead of "teen" mostly based on if I'd want my own teenager to read this, (if I had kids,) and I know *I* would have had no business watching/playing Danganronpa as a teenager. I don't think my depictions of violence are actually "graphic," but I wanted to err on the side of caution.

A sacrifice. That's what Junko Enoshima had said. Her promises of salvation from his eternal boredom via "messy despair" required a sacrifice. Her entire class was to be brainwashed into despair, and Junko didn't think the video of the massacre of the student council had enough "bang" to do the job. Whatever. It meant nothing to Izuru Kamukura, the perfected mind now inhabiting a perfected body that used to belong to Reserve Course nobody Hajime Hinata.

Izuru and Junko had both realized that Hajime and Chiaki Nanami must have known each other in some capacity, and Izuru had already anticipated that Junko may attempt to utilize this fact to do some kind of "experiment" with Izuru. Izuru knew he was smarter than Junko, more SHSL than most SHSLs, but he didn't really much care what she did. He was bored of her, too, even if he was (obstinately) "along for the ride."

Ah, a buzzer sounded in the room he was in. It was just about time to start. "How boring," Izuru observed quietly, stepping in front of the monitor Junko had set up for him to watch Chiaki's progress through the makeshift "dungeon." The room in which Izuru was located was Chiaki's destination, even if she didn't know that yet. He knew where all of Junko's traps were, (she hadn't even tried to hide them, really,) and was able to avoid them easily enough. "Enoshima knows most of this dungeon will not thwart the super high school-level gamer, and yet..." Izuru mused as Chiaki stumbled through the halls.

Time almost seemed unglued from its moorings as Chiaki stubbornly persisted. "Why do you struggle against futility, Nanami-san?" Izuru asked under his breath, barely even blinking anymore as his red eyes locked onto Chiaki's on the monitor. He presumed that Junko had hidden a camera somewhere around his location, to watch him as much as to catch Chiaki's inevitable end. The gamer was bleeding, her face in a mix of blood, sweat, and tears, limping along. If she lived, who knew how able-bodied she would ever be able to be again? Chiaki's struggle made no sense to the hyper-logical Izuru. Struggling against what could only be, what had to be, was illogical, even by the standards of "talentless" humans.

As Chiaki openly mocked Junko's plans and her "game," a faint smile played on Izuru's lips. It was pointless, but entertaining. Maybe hope... Izuru shook his head, long locks going askew. "Hope is just a pre-existing harmony," he muttered, questioning it for the first time since Junko had first uttered those words to him. "Doubt is unlike me," he noted. Doubt was an unknown by definition. Chiaki was almost to his location, so Izuru turned from the screen to watch her enter with his own two eyes.

As the door opened, the difference in seeing Chiaki in person versus on the screen... Izuru didn't know what came over him. The next seconds felt as if each one was an hour. Just as Chiaki's foot was about to land on the floor button intended to spring the fatal trap, Izuru's body moved without his planning it. It wasn't Hajime, though the boy would no doubt have approved. Any residual parts of Hajime compelling Izuru to move would have made sense. That would have been predictable. Izuru had anticipated that. But that wasn't what happened.

Chiaki was fairly short, so it took little force to push her back before she could spring the trap. He couldn't, however, do so without stepping in that spot, feeling the stone button grinding against its surroundings as it depressed. The spears that were meant for Chiaki Nanami sprang from the ground, and instead it was Izuru Kamukura who was impaled every which way. The spears retracted from his torso, leaving him to unceremoniously crash to the floor.

Chiaki screamed, "NO!" and ran to his side, propping him up and not caring that his blood was soaking into her school uniform, mixing with her own. Neither cared, either, about the frantic cursing and swearing Junko was doing over the PA system. Her brainwashing video was no good now! "Why?!" Chiaki demanded, crying. "You don't remember being Hinata-kun, but you did what he probably would have done... Why???"

Izuru had already guessed how much time he had left until he bled out entirely. A transfusion would have been simple enough, but he realized only now that he didn't even know Hajime's blood type. He hadn't needed to know anything about his prior self, and the steering committee would have been furious if they knew he even knew that prior name. Izuru quietly answered Chiaki's question with the truth: "I...don't know... I couldn't predict..."

"What do you mean?" Chiaki inquired, tears starting to land on Izuru's hair as she held him.

"You. Anyone else would have given up in your situation, given into despair. You...kept fighting..." Izuru had to stop to cough up more blood before he could finish. "Maybe...hope is more unpredictable than despair. I...decided to stake my life...on that..." The man so talented he was bored of everything was willing to stake his life on Chiaki's dauntless hope.

"Hinata-kun!" Chiaki cried out, barely holding back sobbing enough to converse.

"...I am not Hinata. Hinata is gone, with all of his memories. I am Kamukura..." Izuru insisted. Was this girl attending his death vigil or that of one already functionally dead?

"You're right..." Chiaki had opened her mouth to protest that he wasn't even trying to remember Hajime, until she thought the better of it. "Kamukura-kun..."

"One...more thing..." Izuru could feel his life ebbing away; he was down to a minute or so at best. He beckoned Chiaki to bring her ear near his mouth so he could say something to her that Junko wouldn't hear.

"Yes, Kamukura-kun?" Chiaki said as she obliged. Izuru was able to give her a detailed explanation of how to escape without running into Junko or setting off any more traps. It wasn't that different from the many times Chiaki had been given similar instructions by NPCs, so remembering it wasn't the hard part. The hard part was leaving Izuru. Chiaki tried refusing, "No! Not until..." She couldn't bear the thought of him drawing his last breath alone. No one deserved that.

"I'm...already bored again...just...GO! Or this is all for nothing!" Izuru ordered her with uncharacteristic harshness.

Chiaki wrapped her arms around him one final time, "Thank you, Kamukura-kun. I'll survive and fight...for both of our hopes."

Izuru gasped one more time, and with his last exhale, the words, "How...interesting..." passed through his lips before his body went limp in Chiaki's arms as their blood pooled together underneath her as she sobbed. Chiaki lay down Izuru on his back and folded his hands over his chest. She hated leaving his remains, which were also Hajime's remains, here like this, but if she lingered any longer, she would just wind up joining him. Chiaki refused to let Izuru's sacrifice be for nothing! Just one more thing... Chiaki took off Izuru's tie and tied it around her injured leg. That seemed to be bleeding the most profusely, so she would attempt to use it as a tourniquet.

Chiaki found the hidden exit Izuru mentioned and opened it slowly, quietly, looking around for immediate threats. As she stepped into the doorway, she turned back one more time to look on Izuru's remains. "I'm...sorry..." She was grateful for her life, but losing Izuru had turned it into a Pyrrhic victory of the worst kind. "I have to keep moving forward, or what he died for will be in vain." Chiaki steeled her nerves and began her real escape. "Goodbye...Kamukura-kun..."


End file.
